Blue-Collar Colt Puts Bluebloods in Their Place

Listen! Worried about your pedigree, are you? Wish you were descended from royalty? Had a whole lot of viscounts and earls in your coat-of-arms? Wish you even had a coat-of-arms?

Forget it. You’re better off as a working stiff. Trust me.

Ever feel neglected as a child? Felt your parents favored your brothers and sisters? They were teacher’s pet and you were “Hey, you!” Stepchild.

The Kentucky Derby, the greatest prize in horse racing, was won Saturday by a horse that had every right to feel he was neglected, was always told to go to his room when company was coming, to speak only when spoken to, wipe his feet and mind his manners. Rodney Dangerfield had it better than Thunder Gulch.

You see, all week long, the great trainer Wayne Lukas, who had three horses in his charge, among them Thunder Gulch, all entered in the Derby, kept talking about the other two. He kept calling his filly, Serena’s Song, the “ballerina.” He identified the colt Timber Country as “the natural.” He seemed to have trouble recalling Thunder Gulch’s name, although he did deplore the fact Thunder Gulch found himself in a barn with the two glamourpusses. The Ugly Duckling syndrome.

The Derby, then, was not only a great victory for Thunder Gulch, it was a great victory for the common man. The uncommon horse.

You see, horse racing has this conceit. It thinks it can measure things like heart, pluck, gameness, competitiveness by heredity. And a genetic formula. It’s the last stand of aristocracy in an increasingly democratic world. Breeding still counts for something around a racetrack.

It no longer matters if your family tree doesn’t have Romanoffs, Bourbons, Hapsburgs or Tudors in it. We can’t be bothered by the color of your blood, your ancestry, your forebears.

But racing still clings to the notion that ancestry does matter. They measure your right to belong to the aristocracy of the track by something called the “dosage index.”

It’s the ultimate snobbery. It purports to separate the peons from the peerage. Marie Antoinette would have loved it. If a horse doesn’t have, so to say, a Lord or an Earl or a Sir or a Baron or an Archduke or a Count in front of his name, throw him out. He’s a no-count peasant. He shouldn’t be allowed in high society, class company. He should be fetching the drinks, serving the gentry. He should be a lead pony, not a contestant. If he were human, he’d go around saying, “Yes, your lordship.”

A Kentucky Derby is like the Court of St. James. Or a cotillion. Unless you’re wearing a monocle or a crown or a diamond tiara, the footmen will throw you out. Horses with high dosage indexes should use the tradesman’s entrance and should not share the gate with the well-bred, should not clutter up the field.

I mean, don’t they know their place? What’s this world coming to?

Anything with a dosage count of more than 4 or 5 should be pulling a plow, not starting in a Kentucky Derby, is their credo. It’s as if a haughty butler stopped you at the door and said, “Excuse me, sir, are you a member? If not, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The Kentucky Derby was won Saturday by a colt these arbiters of social graces might consider vulgar. A lowlife.

Thunder Gulch is a 4 dosage. This may put you on the cusp but it’s a little on the high side--4s and 5s are supposed to quit in the stretch. Bad form, don’t you see? Not our sort.

It doesn’t always work. A 9, Strike The Gold, won the 1991 Derby. But a winner is most often a 2. Or even a 1. No higher than a 3.

Poor Thunder Gulch couldn’t get a break anywhere. He must have wondered what you had to do to get attention. He did everything they asked of him. He ran everywhere. On all kinds of tracks, in all kinds of weather. He won at Belmont, he won at Aqueduct, he won at Gulfstream.

They shipped him to Florida because the stable had all the leading lights it needed. So, they sort of shipped him off to boarding school.

All he did was win the Florida Derby. And the Fountain of Youth. Ordinarily, these are powerful steppingstones to the Kentucky Derby.

But when Thunder Gulch shipped to Kentucky, he ran an undistinguished fourth in the Blue Grass. The wise guys said, “See?! What’d y’expect?” His dosage was showing.

Even when they got the master jockey, Gary Stevens, to fly back from Hong Kong to ride him, the hardboots remained unconvinced. He was one of the most ignored horses by the press at the morning workouts all week. Lukas said he was a good honest sort but he might just be a little short on speed or fast turn of foot to keep up with his roommates. Not star quality. The star’s best friend, maybe.

They added indignity to indignity. He was put up at 12-1 in the morning line, odds you might put on horses just filling the bill, not Florida Derby winners.

When the windows opened, the insult got worse. The public, instead of betting him down, bet him up. He was almost 25-1 by post time, second-longest price in the 19-horse field. He must have felt like a guy in overalls at a black-tie party in Palm Beach.

Then, he was in post position No. 16. This puts you out there where most of the field is just a rumor. You have to run about a sixteenth of a mile just to catch up to the rest of the race. In the long history of the Kentucky Derby, 121 years, only two winners have started in a post position outside of that--Clyde Van Dusen was No. 20 in 1929, Gato Del Sol No. 18 in 1982.

If he’d been human, Thunder Gulch should have pouted, sulked, muttered, “I don’t need this! You can take this race and shove it down your dosage index!”

He didn’t. He comes from a long line of people who show up for work and do a day’s job. Carry a lunchpail, not a monocle. Kind of guys you might say who build the cities, fight the wars, grow the crops.

Even Lukas finally noticed him. “He’s our blue-collar worker,” the trainer said. “He gets the job done.”

He’ll be noticed now, all right. The star will be on his door, the spotlight on him. He’s a horse for the ages. He’ll never pay $51 again.

You wonder what Babe Ruth’s dosage index would have been.

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Surprise Packages

Highest payoffs for winners of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs since $2 mutuel bets began in 1911.

Winner Year Payoff Donerail 1913 $184.90 Gallahadian 1940 $72.40 Proud Clarion 1967 $62.20 Exterminator 1918 $61.20 Dark Star 1953 $51.80 Thunder Gulch 1995 $51.00 Gato Del Sol 1982 $44.40 Bold Venture 1936 $43.00 Zev 1923 $40.40 Ferdinand 1986 $37.40